Chemo #12
March 20

Attempt #1 at chemo #12 failed miserably. I got myself a fever on Sunday (17th) and felt really gross. I talked to a doctor and he said to keep an eye on it but come in if it gets worse or I get new symptoms. Monday morning I woke up with a fever again (highest at 39.3 yeow) so Momsies took me to the emergency room where I felt like puking. They did pretty much the same thing as the last time I got a fever. An IV of a litre of saline, an IV antibiotic. Blood tests and cultures, etc... and I got sent home with a prescription antibiotic for a week. More drugs. I felt OK for the rest of the day. Tuesday I woke up at about 6 with crazy chills which eventually turned into a crazy fever again along with crazy nausea. I took tylenol and stuck it out for the day hoping the antibiotics would do something. This morning (wednesday) I woke up again at 6 with crazy chills and it did the same thing as yesterday. I really felt like throwing up so I went to the bathroom. I spent about an hour on the floor in there feeling pukey and hot. My temperature got up to 40.3. Standing up made me really dizzy.

I had a doctors appointment at 10:30 anyway and chemo was set for today so I went in for the appointment. My regular doctor is on holidays so I saw someone else who was actually quite nice. Basically she said we wouldn't go ahead with today's chemo becuase I'm sick and that if I'm still fevery by friday I may have to come and stay in the hospital for a bit. If not, I'll do chemo on Monday.

She also explained a bit better about the 8 cycles of chemo and says that for Hodgkin's, a lot of doctors like to give the full 8 cycles just to be safe. And she said that the end part is usually the hardest and when people usually get sick and get delays. Great. And she said that bleomycin is probably the least important of the 4 chemo drugs I get. Then why is it having such an effect on the length of my treatment? Arr... But whatever, I'll do the time. I just don't want to feel like this for the next 2 months.

SO hopefully these antibiotics will start working soon. Hopefully I can get this chemo over and done with eventually. And hopefully this doesn't push back every other chemo... one. thing. after. another.

March 28, 2002

Chemo on monday was cancelled becuase my doctor wanted to see me first and couldn't see me until wednesday. So yesterday was chemo #12, finally. It went OK. The nurse used a longer needle since apparently they speed things up. I didn't really notice a time difference but it sure did hurt a lot more going in. It felt like she missed the vein entirely and was just digging around in my arm for a bit. Maybe she was. We all need excitement in our days. But it did the job and only required one poke so there's not much to complain about. The dacarbazine was pretty quick. The lady beside me told me that she was getting the "metal chair leg" flavour and was jealous becuase I was getting fruit punch (adriamycin). It's so nice when the cancer patients around you in the chemo room are young enough to communicate (i.e. under 142).

Oh here's a funny story: I was in the hospital last friday for the third time that week, but for the same reasons. And I spent most of the time lying waiting for someone to come in and tell me something I already knew or that they didn't know anything new. So I spent my time trying to figure out why other people were there or just eavesdropping on any conversation within earshot. But at one point, there was a guy next to me who was there due to "blood in the stools" (off topic: so many people in this world [or maybe just Ottawa] suffer from constipation. I had no idea it was so popular). But anyway, the doctor was asking the regular questions and one of them was asking how much physical activity he gets (he was 87). And he replied "well I have a ping pong table." and the doctor said "ooh you play ping pong too!" (like the doctor was some avid ping pong tabler) and the guy said "well.... no.... but I really like big band music... so I try every day to put some of that music on and I walk around the ping pong table a few times... to the music." Ah, I loved him. But the sad part is, at 87 and with blood in his stools, he's getting way more physical activity than I do. And I even have a ping pong table in the basement.

Anyway, I felt pretty crappy last night. I'm off of prednisone now (finally) so that won't help with the nausea. But I slept for 2 nights without the help of drugs, woo! Then last night, every time I closed my eyes I would get these weird images flashing through my head. Really fast of weird things so I couldn't sleep. Solution? drugs.

So only four more to go. I've said that before. Because of this delay, everything is shoved back a week so now it looks like May 22 will be the last one. Until something comes and screws that up. Wouldn't that be surprising?